Right, time for something girly. Recently, I finally watched the 2019 film of Little Women, the latest adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel, this time written and directed by Greta Gerwig. I've had the DVD for quite some time, but kept putting off watching it as I'd heard rumours that Gerwig had made changes to the ending I wasn't likely to approve of. As it turns out, the film as a whole was good in many ways, but yes, I did resent the changes at the end, not least the coquettish, "post-modern" way they were served up.
To start positive, I enjoyed this version of Little Women a great deal more than the 2017 mini-series adaptation of the same novel. Whereas the TV version concentrated on the hard life of the March family and their ability to cope, the 2019 film re-introduced the importance of imagination and creativity in the March sisters' lives, which was also a big part of the lovely 1994 film with Winona Ryder. Here again, we see the sisters performing amateur theatricals and hosting their own version of the Pickwick Club. When Laurie gets his first glimpse of the March household, he is thoroughly charmed by the warmth and closeness of the family. I was relieved that this film allowed itself sunny, light-hearted scenes and wasn't dead serious all the time: after all, Little Women the book wouldn't have become such a success if it had been all doom and gloom.
The casting of the protagonists works very well, though I mostly prefer the cast of the 1994 film. Saoirse Ronan can overdo the tomboyishness of Jo in a take or two, but she is convincing as an energetic and driven young writer. Florence Pugh makes adult Amy surprisingly likeable (though she's not as convincing as young Amy – I think the 1994 film made the right call when they had two different actresses as Amy, even though the one playing the little minx Amy risks putting the polished young woman Amy in the shade). Emma Watson acquits herself well as Meg – and she needs a win after the lacklustre Beauty and the Beast – and Laura Dern delivers as Marmee, even if it's hard for her or anyone to compare with Susan Sarandon. Timothée Chalamet looks so young and clueless as Laurie you can sort of see why he'd be too immature for Jo. I actually preferred Eliza Scanlen's sweet Beth to Claire Danes in the 1994 film: Danes was very convincing, but there was something slightly passive-aggressive about her Beth ("maybe we should give the Hummels our bread").
I had mixed feelings about the chopping and changing from present to past in this version of Little Women. True, if you're almost over-familiar with the story, it does feel refreshing not to have to sit through the same scenes that always make it into the adaptation in exactly the same order as always. Nevertheless, even if you know the story it can be a bit hard to know where you are in the plot, and I did wonder if someone who hadn't any knowledge of Little Women beforehand would be able to make sense of it all. But mostly, I thought this was a perfectly acceptable way to shake things up and keep the viewer alert.
What was the problem, then? I had a few other quibbles but my main objections all relate to one storyline: Jo's romance – or rather non-romance here – with Professor Bhaer.
Now, I'm not that big a fan of Bhaer as a character. I confess that I have only re-read the first part of Little Women in adult years, while I haven't re-read the part published in Europe as Good Wives since I was a girl (when my mother read it to me). Then, I had no idea why Jo would turn down Laurie's proposal and thought Bhaer was a sad comedown for her, seeing as he was something of a bore who had moral objections to her writing sensational stories. The thing with Bhaer, though, is that he needs to be older (and possibly wiser) than Jo, and someone she can look up to. She falls for someone who can guide her, rather than have to be guided by her, like Laurie. The 1994 film did an excellent job of making Bhaer appealing – I mean, they cast Gabriel Byrne! – while preserving the difference in age and experience between him and Jo, and the contrast between him and the boyish Laurie.
In this film, Bhaer looks more like a glamorous young student than a professor. Louis Garrel could just as well have played Laurie. There is no discernible age gap between him and Ronan's Jo, and his accent sounds more French than German. Byrne as Bhaer made us swallow his criticism of Jo's writing with his gentle, measured manner – you felt he was trying to be constructive, because he sensed that she could do more with her talent. Garrel's Bhaer blurts out "I do not like them" (Jo's stories) and "they are not good", which is effective in that we realise why Jo becomes incensed: those are the very last things you should say to an author. But he doesn't offer any constructive criticism, and there is no reason, on the strength of this conversation, why she should value his opinion. And why does a man who can read and understand Shakespeare express himself so clumsily?
It gets worse, though, when Bhaer re-enters the story towards the end. Here, if the film followed the book, he and Jo should finally get together and get married, after a sweet scene under an umbrella. We do get some romance between them, but it is undercut by a scene with Jo and her publisher spliced in right in the middle of it. Jo is explaining that the heroine in her book does not marry either of her suitors, and her publisher insists that she change the story. We then cut to the umbrella scene – bathed in the same warm, somewhat unreal glow as the film's flashbacks – and then we hear the publisher commending it. It is therefore heavily implied that the romance between Jo and Bhaer and their subsequent marriage only exist as fiction in her novel, while the real Jo remains unmarried. Getting her novel published is her real happy ending.
Now, you could argue that Jo simply didn't want to put her own romantic experiences in her novel – there's a difference between her and her character after all. But she doesn't sound like a happy bride-to-be when discussing the plot change with her publisher (she talks about "selling" her heroine into marriage). The ending is unclear enough for there to be some debate over how it should be interpreted, but from what I've read, Gerwig meant the unromantic interpretation to be the right one. Alcott allegedly wanted Jo to remain single initially but altered the plot to make it more appealing to readers, and Gerwig thought she would honour the writer by giving the film the ending she'd really intended.
Here's the thing, though: whatever Alcott may or may not have intended for Jo to start with, she ended up granting her heroine a love life, and that was the smart creative choice. It's certainly better than some half-baked affair where a male character's only function is to serve as a romantic red herring. Given that Bhaer in the book (as far as I remember) was no Gabriel Byrne, I'd had preferred it if Gerwig had written him out of the story altogether. I could live with that. But where there's a Bhaer, there's a way for him and Jo to be together. Also, there's something self-congratulatory about playing around with the book-within-a-book conceit. Together with rather too many speeches about how the only way a girl in the mid-nineteenth century can make money is to marry rich (though I liked how Aunt March's motive for taking Amy to Europe rather than Jo was that Amy was the most likely to make a good match and save her family's finances), the tinkering with the ending lends the film an air of modern condescension.
We seem to be getting less and less of of romantic plots nowadays, at least from creators of culture and entertainment who want to appear morally irreproachable, and it's starting to get me down. Romance is frowned upon, especially romance between a woman and a man who is older and/or in any way in a position of power in relation to her. I can't help feeling this is hypocritical, to say the least – because, newsflash, quite a lot of women (including me) do find power attractive, however improper it may be to say so. And anyway I like romance, even the blander kind with male protagonists who take their lead from their womenfolk à la Laurie. It's quite true that a woman doesn't necessarily need romance to be happy, but she can still want to experience it through fiction.
